


What Is Lost Can't Be Forgotten

by Peregrine_Took



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 14:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19274971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peregrine_Took/pseuds/Peregrine_Took
Summary: The process of loss.





	What Is Lost Can't Be Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> Avengers Endgame Spoilers ahead.
> 
> I wanted to write this as a way to look into the process of grieving over a prolonged period of time, especially it's effects on memory. 
> 
> Growing up, I lost people who were very influential in my life at a very transitional period in my life. In a lot of ways I was unable to process their deaths until years later, and it was an incredibly isolating experience. 
> 
> In a lot of ways, I suppose writing this is just another way I'm still processing it. 
> 
> \- M

The process of fully understanding that someone will never be in your life again, is a difficult one.  
  
The first few days, Peter thinks of the last few moments he had with Tony.  
  
The feeling of Tony’s hands grasped loosely in his own, his eyes unfocused gazing somewhere eons past Peter. He gets it, really, he does. But the sound of Tony’s heart crawling slowly to a standstill echoes in his mind while he lays awake at night, and when he does manage to fall asleep he wakes up to feeling of his heart pounding in his chest.  
  
He thinks of the moments following Tony’s death. _Tony’s death._ The hard pain in his throat from holding in sobs. The tear tracks on his cheeks running through the grime and blood of the battle. Seeing Pepper, usually so composed and sure, sitting broken at the knee of the person she loved most in the world. (This is before Peter learns of Morgan). Following Captain America as he carries his body through the carnage of battle and dust that has yet to settle. As waves of allies, of _friends_ , part for Tony one last time.  
  
He may not have been on this earth for the past five years, but now that everyone’s back, he thinks it’s never been more silent.  
  
-  
  
It’s a few months later when Peter starts to be able to sleep through the night, and not wake up throat already raw from screaming. When he thinks of Tony now, he doesn’t remember the final moments. He remembers all of the good previous to that day.  
  
Smiles and laughter, a lingering glance that spoke to the belief Tony had in Peter. It gives him a reason to keep moving. He thinks to himself now, when his thoughts wain towards grief, that Tony didn’t die for them all to simply stop living. He kept moving because if Tony wasn’t going to be able to see this world he so desperately loved thrive again, he would. And he would do his best to help it.  
  
-  
  
He first realizes he’s forgetting pieces of Tony two years later when he’s trying to remember Tony’s voice. The panic and feeling of complete dread don’t last long; there are millions of videos of Tony speaking at every type of conference, in any news interview, and the home videos he’s kept close to his heart.  
  
But it’s an unsettling realization. His thoughts first go to Morgan, who was so young when Tony died. He wonders what she remembers of her dad. If his voice faded sooner for her, and if what was left to her as projections give her any relief.  
  
After watching one of the many videos he’d saved from that very first trip to Germany, he just sits. The grief momentarily overwhelming him.  
  
It comes and it goes, and sometimes, no matter how many times he tries to tell himself that he’s okay and that he’s living the life Tony’d given him. He can’t get his thoughts past the realization that he’d been living years on a planet where Tony Stark has not.  
  
It seems like such a simple concept, he’d watched him die. Heard his breath hitch and his heart stop. But like an unstoppable force, he thinks of Tony, and the fact that he has had every experience he was ever going to have with him. Nothing new will ever come from the collective mind of Peter and Tony, he’ll never receive a phone call from half way around the world, or know what truly was going through his head when he’d decided to risk everything for a world he’d already given everything for.  
  
It shouldn’t surprise him, but somehow it always does. And his heart aches as it did in those final moments.  
  
-  
  
It’s years later when Peter realizes he’s missing more than he realized.  
  
Tony is everywhere. He always will be; in murals, statues, in the articles written on every platform and every book even years after the final battle.  
  
Yet he starts to become something of a figment in Peter’s memories. Peter knows his memories are real, but they become less as time goes on. Until the memories of words spoken and phantom touch, turn into impressions of feelings and his own emotions.  
  
Bits and pieces remain sharp and in focus, but his first time meeting Tony goes from one of Peter’s favorite memories, to only the feeling excitement and nervous energy. He can sort of remember what he was doing when he came into the apartment, but he can’t quite remember where Tony was in the apartment,  how they’d gotten to his room or how Tony’d invited him to Germany.  Just vague impressions of feelings.  
  
And it’s frustrating.  
  
He doesn’t cry anymore at the thought of what could have been, or how he should have done more. He only tries to remember what he can (for when Morgan asks for stories), but even that is becoming increasingly difficult.  
  
He’s saved the videos from before he had grown up, but they’re buried deep in the archives of his life.  
  
And besides, it’s getting harder for Peter to connect the man in the videos with the vague placeholder in his mind.  
  
-  
  
Tony Stark had seen who Peter Parker was going to be before Peter had even thought about his future.  
  
He’d trusted Peter with the truth of the world, and the direction to reveal it.  
  
He’d supported Peter with his entire being and believed in his self rather than the abilities he had.  
  
These are the things Peter Parker has come to realize throughout his life, and has come to hold close to his heart.  
  
He doesn’t have stories that span a lifetime, or crisp memories to last him as long. He doesn’t have very many answers for Morgan anymore, though she’d stopped really asking after she’d gone off to college.  
  
His memories have long faded into simply feelings of contentment and happiness. The few details that do remain are truly held close to his soul, and the remaining videos he has don’t get played as frequently as they once did.  
  
He feels his chest ache from time to time, but doesn’t quite connect it to his old friend in the same way he once did.  
  
He doesn’t always feel like he was worth the sacrifice. But he’s living, and that’s enough.


End file.
